For Authors

Journal of Endourology will accept original manuscripts containing material that has not been reported elsewhere except in the form of an abstract of no more than 250 - 300 words. Due to the large number of manuscripts received, Journal of Endourology has adopted a policy of discouraging publication of case reports. Only on rare occasions, will a single case report be sent for review. These reports would be limited to cases of a groundbreaking nature. Authors are encouraged to suggest names of appropriate reviewers and may also request that a particular individual not serve in that capacity.

Manuscripts should be submitted with the understanding that they have neither been published, nor are under consideration for publication elsewhere, except in the form of an abstract. Prior abstract publications should be described in the form of a footnote to the title. Published manuscripts become the sole property of the Journal and will be copyrighted by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. By submitting a manuscript to the Journal, the author(s) agree(s) to each of the conditions herein. In addition, the author(s) explicitly assign(s) any copyrighted ownership he/she (they) may have in such manuscript to the Journal.

Upon acceptance of any manuscript, all authors will receive a follow-up email with instructions on how to complete our online Copyright Agreement form. It is critical to ensure the accuracy of ALL authors’ email addresses when uploading submissions to Manuscript Central to ensure the proper delivery of all email communications.

FAILURE BY ALL AUTHORS TO SUBMIT THIS FORM MAY RESULT IN A DELAY OF PUBLICATION.

The corresponding author is responsible for communicating with coauthors to make sure they have completed the online copyright form. Authors not permitted to release copyright must still return the form acknowledging the statement of the reason for not releasing the copyright.

Policies

NOTE: PLAGIARISM POLICY

All accepted manuscripts will be processed through plagiarism detection software, and any notice of acceptance is considered conditional, pending the review and verification of the plagiarism detection report. If the report detects a high incidence of plagiarism, the Editor-in-Chief reserves the right to rescind the decision to accept the paper. Plagiarized manuscripts will be rejected immediately.

The title page should include the authors’ names and affiliations, the source of a work or study (if any), and a running title of about 45 characters. Please indicate the complete address, phone and fax number and e-mail addresses of all authors, and indicate the author to whom correspondence should be addressed. The second page should contain an abstract of no more than 250 - 300 words, which should be self-explanatory without reference to the text. The manuscript should follow this format: abstract, introduction, materials (or patients) and methods, results, discussion, conclusions, acknowledgments, disclosures, and references. Number pages consecutively.

INSTANT ONLINE PUBLICATION

The Journal publishes all accepted papers within 72 hours of acceptance in their unedited, uncorrected format. It is important to note that the information that is published online, and in all indexing services, is pulled directly from the data that is populated into the fields in Manuscript Central – NOT from the manuscript file – when the paper is originally uploaded to the system for peer review. Consequently, any errors contained in the system will remain on our website and all indexing services, including Medline, until the next revision of the article is published. As such, it is critical that authors enter all authors’ names correctly into the system at the time of submission.

The next revision will take place after the corresponding author sees page proofs, makes any necessary corrections, and returns the changes to the Publisher. Once the alterations are completed, the revised version will be published on our website, and the newly corrected information will then be released to Medline/PubMed, in addition to any other indexing services in which the Journal is included.

Please note that the typical time between acceptance of a paper and page proof distribution is approximately 4-8 weeks depending on the length and complexity of the paper.

Because “ESWL” is a trademark, we prefer “SWL” to be used as the acronym for extracorporeal shockwave lithotripsy. Please follow the requested style to avoid delays in publication. Consult an issue of the Journal for the exact format.

Journal of Endourology is no longer accepting techniques articles for publication. Instead, new techniques should be presented as videos and will be considered for publication in Videourology. All video submissions must be submitted online using the following URL: http://www.liebertpub.com/manuscript/vid

New Technologies in Endourology

Articles in this section are to identify and describe new technologies related to the field of endourology. These technologies are not yet proven but rather are in the development stages and show great promise. Prospective topics should be reviewed by the responsible editor and approved prior to submission. The body of the text should be no longer than 1500 words with an abstract of 150 words or less. The body should include an introduction, discussion of the technology, a specific section on its role in endourology, figures, and references. Black and white figures are preferable, although one to two color figures can be accepted if they truly add to the visual effect. All manuscript submissions must be submitted online using the following URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/endourology

Reviews in Endourology

Articles in this section are to provide a comprehensive, state-of-the-art review of a contemporary topic in endourology, laparoscopy, or minimally invasive surgery. Prospective topics should be submitted to the Editor of the Section for approval prior to submission. Articles should be of a length deemed appropriate to adequately cover the topic. All manuscript submissions must be submitted online using the following URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/endourology

Letters to the Editor(s):

Letters to the Editor(s) are welcomed, but with a 500 word limit and no more than one (1) table OR figure, and with a maximum of four (4) references.

Color ImagesColor photographs are encouraged. All images must be original, and previously unpublished. The images may be accompanied with line diagrams, captions, and arrows; such additions should be contrasted with the background. Scale markers for gross specimens and photomicrographs are required. Patient identifying data from all images must be deleted. A maximum of four figures per article will be accepted. For details regarding specifications for the images, please follow the guidelines under the “Tables and Illustration” section below.

Tables and Illustrations

Use Arabic numerals to number tables. Each table must stand alone; i.e., contain all necessary information in the caption, and the table itself must be understood independently of the text. Details of experimental conditions should be included in the table footnotes. Information that appears in the text should not be repeated in tables, and tables should not contain data that can be given in the text in one or two sentences.

Please follow these instructions when preparing files for uploading:

Do not include any illustrations as part of your text file.

Do not prepare any figures in Word as they are not workable.

Line illustrations must be submitted at 900 DPI.

Halftones and color photos should be submitted at a minimum of 300 DPI.

Power Point and Excel files cannot be uploaded.

Save art as either TIFF or EPS files. Avoid submitting JPEG files.

Color art must be saved as CYMK, not RGB.

Please name figure and table files with the last name of the first author. (e.g. SmithFig1). Do not include any symbols or puncutation within the file name.

Each supplied figure requires a figure legend. All legends should be prepared double spaced, numbered consecutively, and supplied in one Word document (not as individual Word files). Do not include figure legendds in the main text file.

Figures should be numbered in the order cited in the text. _____________________________________________________________

IMPORTANT: Please upload individual files of all manuscript material—do NOT upload a single PDF file containing all text, figure, and table files of your paper. Once all individual files are uploaded on to Manuscript Central, the system will automatically create a single PDF proof for you and the peer-review process. _____________________________________________________________

If it is necessary to cite an abstract, this should be so designated. Authors are responsible for the accuracy of the references and are reminded that inaccurate references are highly frustrating to the reader, the cited author, and indexing services. Abbreviations of journal titles should follow Medline.

Rapid Peer Review Papers

Authors who wish to have their peer review papers rapidly reviewed so these papers will appear in the earliest possible issues may do so at a cost of $300 per article. When submitting online please select a manuscript type of "Rapid Review." The fee must be paid by credit card. The submitting author will be asked to enter the payment info as the last step prior to submitting. Decisions will be made no later than one week after submission.

Disclosure Statement

Immediately following the Acknowledgments section, include a section entitled “Author Disclosure Statement.” This text must be part of your actual manuscript file, not just entered into Manuscript Central. In this portion of the article, authors must disclose any commercial associations that might create a conflict of interest in connection with submitted manuscripts. This statement should include appropriate information for EACH author, thereby representing that competing financial interests of all authors have been appropriately disclosed according to the policy of the Journal. It is important that all conflicts of interest, whether they are actual or potential, be disclosed. This information will remain confidential while the article is being reviewed and will not influence the editorial decision. Please see the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals at http://www.icmje.org/index.htlm#conflicts for further guidance. If no conflicts exist, the authors must state “No competing financial interests exist."

When articles include reports of studies on human subjects, state in the Methods section that an appropriate institutional review board or ethics committee approved the study. Authors who do not have formal ethics review committees should follow the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki. In the Methods section, state that informed consent was obtained from subjects (specify written or verbal).

The principal author must state that if animals were used experimentally, permission was obtained from the appropriate committee(s), and that the animals were treated humanely and the standards conformed to those of current ethical animal research practices.

In addition, text and photographs should not reveal any identifying information unless it is essential for scientific purposes (in which case, consent should be obtained). Masking the subjects’ eyes in photographs is often insufficient to protect their identity.

PUBLICATION ETHICS AND MALPRACTICE STATEMENT

Study Design and Ethics

Documented review and approval from a formally constituted review board (Institutional Review Board or Ethics committee) should be required for all studies involving people, medical records, and human tissues. For those investigators who do not have access to formal ethics review committees, the principles outlined in the Declaration of Helsinki should be followed. If the study is judged exempt from review, a statement from the committee should be required. Informed consent by participants should always be secured. If not possible, an institutional review board must decide if this is ethically acceptable. This information should be outlined in the cover letter accompanying the submission, and a sentence declaring adherence should be included in the acknowledgment section of the manuscript.

Animal experiments should require full compliance with local, national, ethical, and regulatory principles, and local licensing arrangements.

Definitions of Scientific Misconduct

Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers generally follows the guidelines and rules regarding scientific misconduct put forth by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), and the Office of Research Integrity (ORI).

Scientific misconduct and violation of publishing ethics vary and can be intentionally or unintentionally perpetrated. Some examples of misconduct and violations include, but are not limited to, the following:

Material failure to comply with legislative and regulatory requirements affecting research:Including but not limited to serious or substantial, repeated, willful violations of applicable local regulations and law involving the use of funds, care of animals, human subjects, investigational drugs, recombinant products, new devices, or radioactive, biologic, or chemical materials constitutes misconduct.

Conflict of Interest: Nondisclosure of any conflicts, direct or indirect, to the Journal which prevents you from being unbiased constitutes misconduct.

Deliberate misrepresentation: of qualifications, experience, or research accomplishments to advance the research program, to obtain external funding, or for other professional advancement constitutes misconduct and/or fraud.

Simultaneous Submission: Submitting a paper to more than one publication at the same time constitutes misconduct.

Responding to Allegations of Possible Misconduct

The Publisher is committed to helping protect the integrity of the public scientific record by sharing reasonable concerns with authorities who are in the position to conduct an appropriate investigation into an allegation. As such, all allegations of misconduct will be referred to the Editor-In-Chief of the Journal who in turn will review the circumstances, possibly in consultation with associate editors and/or members of the editorial board. Initial fact-finding will usually include a request to all the involved parties to state their case and explain the circumstances in writing. In questions of research misconduct centering on methods or technical issues, the Editor-In-Chief may confidentially consult experts who are blinded to the identity of the individuals, or if the allegation is against an editor, an outside expert. The Editor-In-Chief will arrive at a conclusion as to whether there is enough reasonable evidence that the possibility of misconduct occurred.

When allegations concern authors, the peer review and publication process for the manuscript in question will cease while the process described herein is researched. The investigation will be taken to completion even if the authors withdraw their paper. In the case of allegations against reviewers or editors, they will be replaced in the review process while the matter is investigated.

Editors or reviewers who are found to have engaged in scientific misconduct will be removed from further association with the Journal, and reported to their institution.

If an inquiry concludes there is a reasonable possibility of misconduct, the Editor-in-Chief will retract the paper from the Journal and the scientific record. If the paper is still under peer review, the Editor-in-Chief will withdraw the paper from consideration to the Journal.

All allegations will be kept confidential.

Abbreviations Used

Please upload a SEPARATE WORD FILE with the heading “Abbreviations Used,” listing all abbreviations with an equal sign indicating their spelled out meaning. (For example: CT = Computed Tomography.) If there are no relevant abbreviations in your manuscript you must indicate that by putting in the Abbreviations Used heading followed by the word “None.” This list is required upon submission.

Permissions

The author must obtain permission to reproduce figures, tables, and text from previously published material, even if that is the author’s own work. Written permission must be obtained from the original copyright holder (generally the publisher, the author or editor) of the journal or book concerned. An appropriate credit line should be included in the figure legend or table footnote, and full publication information should be included in the reference list. Written permission must be obtained from the author of any unpublished material cited from other laboratories and should accompany the manuscript.

Reprints

Reprints may be ordered by following the special instructions that will accompany page proofs, and should be ordered at the time the corresponding author returns the corrected page proofs to the Publisher. Reprints ordered after an issue is printed will be charged at a substantially higher rate.

Does your research funder have an open access mandate or would you like to expand the dissemination of your research?

The Liebert Open Access option enables authors to publish open access in our esteemed subscription-based journals.

The benefits of Liebert Open Access include:

- High visibility; open access articles are freely available online upon publication

- You retain copyright with the open access license allowing broad dissemination of your research

- You can freely share your article in repositories and research networks without restrictions

- Easy compliance with open access mandates

- Rigorous editorial and peer-review

- Targeted email announcement featuring a direct link to article

Identification and Marketing Open access articles are listed with an OA icon in journal tables of content (TOC), TOC alerts, and in marketing announcements. Open access articles are highlighted and promoted in targeted email announcements to thousands of research leaders in your field.

Copyright and Licensing If you choose to publish with open access, you will retain copyright of your article and a Creative Commons license will be applied. The liberal Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC-BY) license is the default open access license used at Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The CC-BY license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited.

At this time we allow authors to choose between the CC-BY or CC-BY-NonCommercial license. A limited number of journals offer NonCommercial licenses exclusively.

Ordering Open Access Once your article has been accepted for publication in a journal, you will receive an email with information on ordering Liebert Open Access. If you would like more information about Liebert Open Access or would like to order open access, please email openaccess@liebertpub.com.

Publishing open access includes an article publication charge (APC) and authors are asked to fill out a short open access order form. You can pay by credit card or receive an invoice to be returned with payment or via bank transfer. Please remember that traditional subscription journals can carry mandatory or optional author fees. The Liebert Open Access APC does not cover or replace existing publication or author fees.

Publishing biomedical or biotechnology research?Biomedical researchers should consider publishing inBioResearch Open Access, a fully open access peer-reviewed journal dedicated to publishing top research in the biomedical and biotechnology fields. For details, please visit the information for authors on the journal website.

*Please note that PubMedCentral, not the Publisher, has sole control over when the paper is made live on PMC.

Is your institution a member of the Liebert Author Advocacy Program?

The Liebert Author Advocacy Program (LAAP)provides valuable membership benefits for OA publication to institutional and funding organizations, and supports global funding mandates. Authors who are affiliated with LAAP member institutions receive all the valuable benefits of Liebert OA article publication, and more.

NIH Public Access Policy: In order to assist our authors who have NIH funding to comply with this policy, Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. publishers will deposit the final accepted paper (after copy-editing and proofreading) to PubMed Central (PMC) on behalf of the authors. Authors need not take any action. The manuscript's public access posting on PMC will occur 12 months after final publication. This service is provided free of charge. Please note that authors may not deposit manuscripts directly to PMC or other sites without permission from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.

Publishing in Subscription Journals

By signing the copyright transfer statement, authors still retain a set of rights that allow for self-archiving.

Authors may archive their preprint manuscripts (version prior to peer review) at any time without restrictions. Authors may archive their postprint manuscripts (accepted version after peer review) in institutional repositories, preprint servers, and research networks after a 12 month embargo. The 12 month embargo period begins when the article is published online. Postprints must not be used for commercial purposes and acknowledgement must be given to the final publication, and publisher, by inserting the DOI number of the article in the following sentence: “Final publication is available from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers http://dx.doi.org/[insert DOI]”. Authors may archive on their personal website without an embargo provided their manuscript is updated with an acknowledgement to the publisher copyright and final published version.

The final published article (version of record) can never be archived in a repository, preprint server, or research network.

Publishing Open Access

Authors that wish to easily comply with funder or institutional open access mandates should consider publishing open access. Liebert Open Accessoption allows authors to make their research freely available online without restrictions. Additionally, Liebert Open Access option allows authors to retain copyright, archive and share the final published version of their article without restrictions. To publish open access please email openaccess@liebertpub.com or visit Liebert Open Access for more information.

The views, opinions, findings, conclusions and recommendations set forth in any Journal article are solely those of the authors of those articles and do not necessarily reflect the views, policy or position of the Journal, its Publisher, its editorial staff or any affiliated Societies and should not be attributed to any of them.

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